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Duty-free shopping booms at border gate
A one-month old duty-free shopping complex at the Tinh Bien border gate for Vietnam and Cambodia has been packed with Cambodians looking for that next great deal.
Thousands of them say that before the boom in made-in-Vietnam products, they were all about the cheap Chinese and Thai imports. But all that has changed now that Tinh Bien Commercial Zone is up and running - where wholesale accounts for the lion’s share of the shopping here.
Vietnamese companies plying the zone sell everything from processed food and stationery to household appliances and clothing and footwear.
The centre is also the first place in An Giang Province to have a bonded warehouse.
At present six businesses have built supermarkets, stores and warehouses, and 43 others have registered at a combined capital of VND350 billion ($19.630 million).
According to Nguyen Minh Tri, head of the Tinh Bien Commercial Zone’s Management Board, the average turnover runs at about VND1 billion ($56,000) per day.
An Giang, which has a 94-kilometer-long border with Cambodia, is home to five border gates.
The new facility is at a border crossing between Vietnam’s delta province of An Giang and Cambodia’s Takeo province, south of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
The provincial government said exports through the five An Giang border gates came in at US$438 million in the first eight months of 2009, Vietnam News Agency reported.
vietnews
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